Search

This satirical video advertising a “fidget midget spinner” appeared this week on funk, an online media site owned by Germany’s public broadcasting channels ARD & ZDF. Michel Arriens, president of Germany’s Federal Association for Short-Statured People and their Families (BKMF), released a video in response. He argues:

“Midget” means “dwarf” and as a short-statured person, I do not want to be referred to that way. “Midget” is a slur in America, in Germany. And short-statured people are short-statured people. And I am Michel and I have many abilities and maybe some faults, too, but I do not want to be compared to a dwarf or a Lilliputian because Lilliputians come from Gulliver’s Travels and dwarfs appear in Lord of the Rings, but I’m from Hamburg and I’m made of flesh and blood, and you don’t seem to get that.

I demand that you immediately delete this video, apologize to the community and in the future use our tax money for better, more sensible things than ableist, inhumane s***.

Funk has not deleted the video, but posted the following a statement directly below it:

Hey Everyone: After hearing your reactions and discussing this issue both within our team and with Michel Arriens, we have decided to leave the video here because we don’t want to put an abrupt end to the discussion. We did not wish to hurt anyone and yet we obviously did – and for that we want to apologize. If you are interested in learning more about short-stature, we recommend visiting the website of the Federal Association for Short-Statured People and their Families at www.bkmf.de. We are also grateful to you for getting this discussion started with your comments and we want to continue to learn about this subject in more depth.

Funk’s apology appears as sincere as the original video is cringe-worthy. The supposed hilarity too many find in short-stature continues from the courts of Medieval and Early Modern Europe on into the present day comedy of online videos, sitcoms, dramas, sketch shows, late night shows, and art-house films.

As for Arriens’ argument about words, here in Germany the word “dwarf” („Zwerg“) is used to refer to little old men featured in fairy tales and the fantasy genre, and it is also commonly a pet name for little children. It is therefore considered a slur. Over the course of the disability rights movements of the last few decades, the medical term “dwarfism” (“Zwergwuchs”) has been dropped and replaced with “short-stature” (“Kleinwuchs”).

Such a change has not occurred in English—or French or Swedish or Spanish—medical terminology, which is primarily why I use the terms “dwarf” and “dwarfism” on the blog, much to the chagrin of many of my German friends. I have written extensively about make-believe dwarfs and the problem of lookism in both the fantasy genre and the real world. The debate over terms may be never-ending, but hopefully the same will not hold true for the debate over freak shows.